We stopped what we were doing so she could answer. As soon as she picked up, he started talking.
"Visi is at the warehouse, but Shroud showed up on site. Can you teleport there? It's urgent."
"Whoa-uh-okay, yeah, I can do that." she replied, then turned to me. "Miguel, go get changed."
'I warned them.' I thought while Malevola got dressed and I put on my suit, slightly frustrated at being blue-balled. Once we were ready, we regrouped, and Malevola opened a portal to the location.
When we arrived, we found Invisigal in the middle of an asthma attack, desperately trying to reach her inhaler lying at Shroud's feet.
"Get Invisigal." I told Malevola. "I'll handle getting the briefcase from Shroud."
"Funny… you're Spider, aren't you?" Shroud asked me after a brief laugh.
Malevola grabbed Invisigal and teleported away, probably to SDN infirmary.
"Indeed, it's me." I replied to him.
"I've gotten quite a bit of information about you recently, and I have to say, I respect you a lot, because just like me, you're willing to sacrifice many things to get what you want." he said, clearly referring to my file.
'There's a traitor at SDN, because our files are supposed to be strictly confidential.' I concluded from his words.
"So I'd like to understand." he continued. "I'd like you to explain to me why a man of your caliber decided to lower himself to playing hero. Why don't you consider joining me?"
"Shroud, honestly, I'm not a very talkative guy, so we're going to stop this little question game, and you're going to hand over the Astral Pulse." I replied, not beating around the bush.
After a few seconds of him watching me, he said. "Very well, I see, the probabilities are not in my favor, but next time they will be." and he threw me the briefcase. Then he followed up by firing several shots from his gun, coming from different directions and a smoking bomb. I caught the briefcase while dodging the bullets, and when my feet hit the ground, he was no longer there in front of me.
'I should have anticipated it.' After thinking that, I headed back to SDN. Later, when I arrived, I went straight to the infirmary. I opened the door, and inside were Robert, Chase, Blonde Blazer, Malevola, and Invisigal, who was lying on a bed with her eyes closed.
"Robert, you know I'm going to have to suspend her no matter what… but this time we also have to consider really cutting her from the team. I'm not saying we should, just that we have to consider it. It's one hundred percent your decision."
Robert sank into his thoughts while Blonde Blazer leaned down to support him. I stepped closer to them at that moment. "I got the briefcase, but Shroud escaped." I announced, handing it to Robert.
Without waiting, he opened it, but to everyone's surprise, the briefcase was empty.
"He screwed me." I said when I saw it, unable to believe I'd been played. "He never opened the briefcase in front of me. I don't know how it's possible. Did you see him do it on the cameras, Robert?"
"No, I didn't see anything either."
The next day, we were back at work.
"As you've probably seen and heard, Invisigal has been suspended." Robert announced over the comms.
And like any other day, we went back to doing our missions.
Beep beep* Go rescue Bone Zone and its employees at the radio station from the Deadly Dozen, a group of villains.
I was dispatched on that mission with Phenomaman.
We arrived at the radio station with sirens screaming inside the building and smoke pouring out of the upper floors. The Deadly Dozen had already taken control of the place, using the broadcast tower as a signal amplifier for their weapons. Through the broken windows, we could hear Bone Zone still talking on air, trying to keep listeners calm while his staff was trapped somewhere inside.
We breached from above. I crashed through a skylight while Phenomaman dropped straight down, denting the floor beneath him. The first two villains didn't even have time to react. I webbed one to the mixing board and kicked the other into a wall, knocking him out cold.
The rest of the Deadly Dozen reacted fast. Gunfire erupted from behind overturned desks and soundproof panels. I moved on instinct, bouncing off walls, pulling weapons out of hands, slamming bodies together, also took out my fangs.
"It's a fucking vampire!" one of them shouted.
Phenomaman advanced absorbing hits and returning them with devastating punches.
"They are emotionally unstable." he commented, snapping a villain's weapon in half. "I...relate."
We pushed deeper into the station. In the main studio, Bone Zone was still live, blood on his forehead but still talking into the mic.
"And folks, if you're just tuning in, yes, there are in fact supervillains in the building, but-"
I landed next to him and cut the broadcast. "Show's over."
The leader of the Deadly Dozen triggered a dead man's switch, overloading the tower's power core. The building started to shake.
"Do not worry." Phenomaman said.
I webbed the core shut just long enough to delay the explosion while Phenomaman carried the injured staff out. The last villains tried to flee, but I wrapped them up and pinned them to the walls.
Outside, the station went quiet. Fire crews took over, Bone Zone gave us a shaky thumbs-up, and the Deadly Dozen were loaded into armored vans.
"Mission success." Phenomaman said. "I feel marginally better."
It was followed by a whole bunch of other missions, today was really packed.
"Okay, team. Good shift, all things considered." Robert told us. "See you tomorrow, hopefully with some good news."
We went back to HQ and settled into the team conference room cause the others wanted to know what had happened the night before, so Malevola and I gave them a rundown.
That led to the next topic, should Invisigal stay on the team or leave? The discussion turned into a debate, when suddenly Robert walked into the room.
"What's going on here?" he asked us.
"We're doing a vote." Sonar replied. "About Invisigal. We understand that last time you saved her from being cut, and that if it had been any one of us, we would've been fired. And now she makes a huge mistake with no real consequences, so yeah…" he explained.
"For my part, I abstained from voting because I'm neither an earthling nor a reformed villain. I only came because I thought we were going to play Magic: The Gathering tonight." Phenomaman said, adding. "and I really hope we do."
"Alright, who wants her to stay?" Robert asked.
"Me." Golem answered.
"And me." I said next.
"I thought you'd be against it." Malevola told me.
'There's a traitor among us, better if we stay together.' I thought, then said. "I have my reasons."
"Same here, I agree." Flambae said. "You let me come back even though you didn't have to."
"I see…" Robert began to say.
"Look… I'm happy to see how far you've come. A few months ago, you wouldn't even be sitting in this room like this, discussing the needs of the Z-Team. But I'm not cutting Invisigal. You don't kick someone when they're already down, you help them back up…" he continued.
But I couldn't help thinking that his personal feelings were playing a big role in that decision. 'Still, I voted for her to stay.'
"…We're like a fucked-up family. Now isn't the time to cast blame." he finished.
The door behind Robert opened and closed, a sign that Invisigal had been in the room the whole time. Robert left to go find her.
After that, everyone went back to their own business.
[ Robert's POV ]
"I honestly don't know how I'm supposed to feel." I said to Invisigal after she confessed that she had worked for Shroud, and that she was the one who planted the bomb on my Mecha a few months ago. "You did villain things when you were a villain. I forgive you." I added, after processing what she had just told me.
"You don't even realize what you're saying." she replied.
"That's in the past." I said simply.
"You know, deep down, I just wanted you to look at me the way you look at Blazer." she confessed.
'I didn't know how to respond to that. I had noticed the signals both of them were sending me.'
Faced with my silence, she stood up, grabbed her things, and turned invisible to leave but before she did, I felt lips press against mine. I chose not to return the kiss.
After that, she left.
Later, I found myself in a bar, thinking about everything that had happened recently. On the TV, Blonde Blazer was explaining without too many details what had happened at the warehouse.
"That bitch is hot, isn't she? She's got everything where it counts." the bartender said to me.
Keeping my cool, I asked him for another drink.
"Hey kid, what's wrong with you? Why do you look so lost in thought?" said a man to my right at the counter. I didn't answer.
"Man, what I wouldn't give to suck on that blonde's tits." the bartender added again, staring at the screen.
This time, I hit him with my glass, knocking him to the floor. He got back up and was about to hit me when the man to my right pulled out a gun and shot him dead then calmly turned back to me.
"Blonde Blazer… I respect her, you know. A real superhero. You've gotta have some class."
When I looked at his face, I realized it was Shroud.
"Yeah, funny how you ended up coming to our hideout." he said. "Take care of him." He gestured to the others, and I was beaten and knocked unconscious.
When I opened my eyes, I was hanging upside down.
"You, your father, your team, you all think you can beat me. You can't stop me. That's the reality." Shroud said to me.
"That gun belonged to your father. He kept it in his locker, always loaded. He didn't expect I'd use it against him to kill him. The first bullet grazed his shoulder, I wasn't ready for that level of adrenaline yet. The second hit the top of his chest. The third hit his heart. He was on the ground, eyes filled with fear. The fourth went into his head, and the fifth, unnecessary, was just to make sure I'd finished him. There's one bullet left in that gun now, and there's a sixteen-and-a-half percent chance that bullet hits you." he said, spinning the cylinder and pressing the barrel against my forehead.
"I thought your friend Spider had stolen the Astral Pulse from me, but it was your little invisible girlfriend who did it to give it to you." he said then asked. "Where is it?"
I didn't answer, and he pulled the trigger. No bullet in my head.
"That's why I hate luck." he said, reloading.
"If she had it...do you really think...I'd be here like...some fucking piñata?" I said.
"No, don't tell me you believe that. Show him." he ordered.
One of his goons activated a hologram. It showed Invisigal slipping the Astral Pulse into one of her pockets, right when I was checking other cameras. "Now what I don't get is why she didn't give it to you… Oh? She played you too. I thought she was working for you, turns out she was screwing both of us." he commented, like a sudden revelation.
Then suddenly I heard the door being smashed open, and Shroud said.
"The Blonde Blazer… I fired the bartender, but I can still make you something to drink."
"No thank you." she replied.
"Then to what do I owe the pleasure?" he asked.
"I'm here for him. In five minutes, this bar will be surrounded by SDN agents, heroes, and any rival gang you've got here. So even if I can see that I'm outnumbered, even if maybe I'll fall, I think I'll take a lot of you with me. Leave now, or half of you die here."